Collaborations are often transdisciplinary whereby people with different backgrounds need to be able to work together and therefore share knowledge. This means people have to cross knowledge boundaries. Crossing these boundaries can be done with boundary objects that help to transfer knowledge across these boundaries (Carlile, 2002, 2004). Touch can expand the vocabulary that people have at their disposal and therefore contribute to making transferring experiential knowledge and crossing boundaries easier. To make the research of how touch can be applied to enhance transdisciplinary learning more concrete, a specific context has been chosen, namely the organization ‘Centre of Expertise Societal Innovation’. Within this organization, they want to create learning communities whereby knowledge is shared and preserved between students and others stakeholders in consecutive projects. This has led to the following research questions: “How to improve the transition between graduation projects within the Urban Innovation program of EMI with a haptic language design to preserve knowledge within the different communities of practice.” The knowledge that the organization wants to preserve is so-called tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge is hard to express in words. Therefore, guidance is needed to help people express their tacit knowledge. From the theory of transdisciplinary learning, it is retrieved that the 7 habits of the mind are important to foster transdisciplinary learning. These habits also include using the senses of the human body. Therefore, it is interesting to combine transdisciplinary learning by expressing tacit knowledge with the senses of the human body. Especially the sense of touch is interesting to use because touch can deepen communication and is one of the most versatile senses. The literature study in combination with exploratory research on how touch can be used in communication, has resulted in 6 haptic design principles for transdisciplinary learning. These principles can be used by designers that want to create physical haptic designs for transdisciplinary learning. The 6 haptic principles are: 1. Haptic design triggers people to touch it 2. Haptic design makes people conscious of touch 3. Haptic design enables different touch experiences 4. Haptic design translates and adjusts between different disciplines by providing the same meaning for everyone 5. Haptic design evokes interaction between users 6. Haptic design gives people the tools to make their thoughts and ideas tangible With the principles, a final concept design has been created, called MIMIC. MIMIC is a haptic language design that helps users to express their internal thoughts, ideas, and feelings by providing tools to make these internal thoughts, ideas, and feelings tangible. Translating to external forms will make it easier for others to understand. MIMIC consists out of two sets of cubes, the basic set made of wooden cubes with different weights, and the haptic set of cubes with different materials from 10 categories on each side cubes. Furthermore, a guide, an instruction sheet, and warming-up exercises are created to give guidance to users for sharing relevant knowledge and the use of the haptic language in general.

Happiness is something we, as humans, seek to attain yet we are not entirely familiar with what exactly it means. Typology of fundamental needs (Desmet & Fokkinga, 2020) explains comprehensively, yet detailed enough, the needs we must fulfil in order to be happy. An average person spends a third of their life at work (Pryce-Jones, 2010) and in that one-third of life, how those needs get fulfilled or harmed influences the happiness of an individual. Scholars of positive psychology argue that “positive states help people to thrive, mentally flourish and grow psychologically” (Frederickson, 2001). At the same time, happy people have been proven to be up to 20% more productive (Sgroi, 2015). Therefore, not only as a social responsibility should an organization put their focus on employee happiness but as an economic benefit as well. However, the vast science of happiness and the nature of the context (an organization) makes it an “open” or “wicked” challenge (Bijl-Brouwer et al., 2019). The challenge starts from analyzing happiness of employees within an organization, then introducing initiatives to improve happiness and finally, tracking the progress and effectiveness. However, the current scenario and limitations of happiness within organizations combined with the multi-faceted nature of happiness hints towards an even bigger challenge: achieving a happiness mindset.This project is an attempt to operationalize the typology of fundamental needs within the context of an organization in order to aid in achieving a happiness mindset. Borrowing knowledge from systems thinking and phenomenological hermeneutics, a theoretical framework is developed which is translated into a practical approach and tested on 4 different cases. The learnings and real life narratives obtained from this practical approach are utilized in developing the final outcome: “Ajar Process”. It is a 4 step process: Awareness, Alignment, Action and Acknowledgement. It starts with making the participants aware of the typology of fundamental needs, making them capable of sorting their real life experiences according to the need fulfillment. This awareness is then mutually aligned with all participating individuals, so that the perception of what happiness means in that context is similar for everyone. This prompts meaningful conversations leading everyone into a pro-active attitude, coming up with mutually decided initiatives to improve the happiness through need fulfillment. Eventually, the effectiveness of those initiatives is evaluated and a decision is made which step of the process to go to next. In this way, the process never ends and a repeated use results in a happiness mindset. Design concepts are proposed per step of the Ajar process which aid in executing that step effectively. Ajar process is presented as a service expansion for Emotion Studio (design agency) where they would offer to execute the first sprint of the process within the organization and hand it over to them for future executions.

Traditionally, conventional consultancies provide operational guidance to customers. However, market demands have shifted towards a human centred approach, leading to an increase in design consultancies. Design consultancies deliver not only great results but also introduce innovative ways of thinking through a process-driven approach differing from the result-driven process that clients were used to. The new ways of working poses a new challenge of rising uncertainty. Building trust with client organization reduces the inherent risk of working together, thereby building a stronger relationship. This helps consultancies gain credibility and create mutual reliability, improving brand loyalty and customer retention. Similarities with the creative problem solving process and trust building process were drawn to form a template. Further the research was scoped to see trust building from an individual standpoint, i.e. design consultant being the facilitator in enabling clients build trust towards them. The project was set with the research question of “How do individuals in design consultancies help build trustful relationships with clients amid the constant shift in design perceptions? “ From empirical and theoretical analysis, eight driving factors and many trust building actions were identified. Apart from this, the research identified a lack of trust building awareness, how it is important to build trust around your context and with yourself. Further a trust building journey was developed that establishes how trust is built in a step wise approach and how it can be empowered for skill development for individuals seeking to work in a consultancy environment. The design solution is a guidebook developed to raise awareness and help surface the factors necessitated towards trust building through narrative-based learning. Narratives of working professionals experiences highlighting suitable actions taken for trust development helps individuals reflect on their ways of working and embed new actions that improves trust building.

Free spaces are a characteristic of the Amsterdam identity. However, due to the scarcity of space and the pressure of the commercial market, these creative, free-spirited, subcultural places are pushed to the abyss. Amsterdam seems to be losing its distinctive and diverse character, making room for a monoculture. The municipality of Amsterdam wants to secure these places and create room for new spaces. But how do you ensure that the municipality actually protects these subcultures? Due to pressure on urban land, often available places are temporary, social projects of this kind are often used as merely urbanism, after which the surrounding area is gentrified. It does not take long before the initiative is pushed aside by commercial parties. It is therefore necessary to find permanent places for these initiatives. Embedding free space in the regular area planning will secure this permanency to some extent and will liberate space for this purpose.

This study centers around the development of a crafting tool within the CardioVitaal cardiac rehabilitation (CR) program, aimed at transforming physical activities into personally fulfilling experiences for patients post-rehabilitation. The design vision emphasizes leveraging health crafting theory to empower patients to discern what brings them joy in exercise. Through literature reviews, expert interviews, collaborative sessions with cardiac patients, and iterative design processes, a digital crafting application was designed. This app serves as a digital companion, offering personalized activity recommendations, action planning flows, and reflection prompts to support patients in sustaining physical activities beyond the confines of the CR program.

The need for creativity has never been bigger. Technological changes, raised expectations in the area of sustainability and safety, increased focus on customer experience ask for pro-active innovation. On top of that has Covid-19 changed the world fast and radically the past half year. The world went in lockdown and because of that organisations have accepted work-from-distance as the new normal. In order to stay relevant and be adaptive to the rapidly changing landscape, organisations have recognised creativity as catalyst for innovation. Organisations initiate innovation programs to evoke culture change by fostering experiential learning in creativity. Employees are expected to adopt a creative mindset by applying trained skills and knowledge into daily practice. However, uncertainty of learning something new and the ambiguity of creativity create resistance under employees making them fall back into their old routines. In order to make this cultural change stick, an employee-centered approach is necessary. To understand how employees can be guided/supported in learning experientially using creativity in their way of working, the central aim of this research is to define how creative confidence can be boosted. An extensive literature study showed that there are seven creative culture factors to empower employees in their confidence to use creativity. The extent employees feel empowered is interdependent on the culture factor work climate (domain-specific). A creative climate has the ability to empower autonomy and thereby the confidence to use creativity. Therefore, the other five creative culture factors need to be established, namely: integral strategic vision, supportive leadership style, flexible organisational structure, accessible professionalism and available resources. To develop a creative climate twelve dimensions are derived from insights of both literature and multiple exploratory research activities. These dimensions are either comfort (stability and direction)- or freedom (exploration and own interpretation) orientated. To boost creative confidence a creative climate should be evolved in which these orientations are experienced in balance. To be able to bring this balance into practice, a guide has been conceptualised focusing on online project meetings. Facilitators can use this guide to build-up an effective meeting flow for their weekly online progress meetings. This DIY-guide is called 'Creative Rooms', which includes a basis structure with different ‘meeting rooms’, a folder with extra templates and facilitating notes. With Creative Rooms a facilitator can build-up a meeting flow regarding guidelines based on the creative climate dimensions. Each meeting room in this flow contains activities and features to enhance a creative climate relevant for position in the meeting flow. The facilitator navigates the meeting group through the flow in order to achieve alignment, connectivity, implementation and creativity. These are the four success indicators for effective meetings with a creative climate (the 12 dimensions). The use of Creative Rooms has been evaluated with employees, faciliatory experts and a meeting group to test the clarity and effectiveness of the guide. These evaluations led to the revised design in the shape of a package containing: DIY guide, reference manual and implementation assistance from a customer support manager. Thereby the Creative Rooms package is a guide to boost creative confidence within and beyond online project meetings.

This thesis focuses on fostering creative confidence within the context of entrepreneurial education for the VMBO/HAVO/MBO levels. Recognising the creative potential in everyone, the challenge is to bridge the gap between being creative and having the confidence to use it. The literature review identified the importance of giving students the freedom to experiment and immerse themselves in experiences, emphasising the overlap between entrepreneurial and creative attitudes such as risk-taking, critical thinking and openness to ambiguity. It became clear that in a creative learning process it is not the end result that is important, but the process itself, encouraging reflection and learning from mistakes. However, the fieldwork revealed that the existing tasks within GoFuture were seen as too framed, limiting students’ exploration of questions. Teachers expressed an openness to more active and creative teaching, but faced challenges in preparation due to time constraints and a lack of tools from the platform. Students and teachers agreed on the importance of creativity in education and entrepreneurship and expressed a desire for more opportunities to integrate creativity into learning. Hands-on, group-oriented tasks were seen as more motivating and challenged the prevailing focus on rational thinking. Moving to the design phase, three critical design directions were identified, emphasising the need for an experiential, step-by-step approach to learning. The potential of GoFuture to foster creative confidence by encouraging risk-taking behaviour was recognised, leading to the formulation of a new design goal that prioritised creating awareness and courage to take risks and fail. A secondary literature review was performed within the context of risk-taking. A set of guidelines was created that support within the development of designing a solution. The subsequent stages of ideation, prototyping and testing led to the development of a creative teaching module for teachers. Build upon the proposed design guidelines, this module includes several themes, assignments and a sharing platform. The module supports teachers in fostering a creative mindset in the classroom and provides a pathway for innovation within the education system. Alongside the module, a roadmap has been developed, consisting of four horizons. The initial focus is on raising awareness through the creative teaching module, and the end vision focusses on fostering a culture of creativity, innovation and confidence in both students and educators, preparing students for a dynamic and innovative future.

The In-House Creative Studio faces a significant challenge due to an increasing workload among its team of creatives, which includes visual designers, concept creators, copywriters, producers, photographers, and project/event managers. This team may only experience slight expansion, despite the growing demand for campaign and event materials targeted at three main groups: B2B, B2C, and Talent. Consequently, the Creative Studio is forced to be selective, unable to approve all project requests due to the overwhelming volume of work. Ideally, the studio would like to take on more projects. However, the creative team's efficiency is frequently undermined by the considerable time spent managing internal stakeholders, the misalignment resulting from unclear communications, and inefficient workflows. The primary source of these issues was identified as stakeholders providing incomplete or illogical design briefs. This graduation project explores how Conversational AI might be used in the context of setting up inter-organisational project briefs to help briefing writers improve their design briefings. Explorative research on the challenges within creative corperate processes and GenAI opportunities clarified that design briefings are a major bottle neck within creative corporate processes Recognizing this, it becomes evident that to effectively address this bottleneck, stakeholders need assistance in improving the quality of their design breifings prior to the meeting and without external help from the Creative Studio’s briefings reviewers. This resulted in creating an conversational agent that enabled stakeholders to self-evaluate and improve the quality of their v1 briefings without external help before the first briefing meeting with the Creative Studio. The final design was evaluated over the span of two sessions with an internal stakeholder of the case company and the Creative Strategist. In the first session, Jelly’s ability to assist the briefing writer was evaluated. In the subsequent session, the feedback comments of Jelly were compared to that of the Creative Strategist. The results suggest that while Jelly has been effective in certain areas, such as providing detailed feedback that aligns with feedback standards of the briefing reviewers, it requires refinements in user interface language, feedback customisation, and context-specific content generation. The feedback from Jelly, when accurate, led to noticeable improvements in the quality of v1 briefings, aligning with the goals of enabling the stakeholder to self-evaluate their briefings independently. The findings suggest that Jelly was found to be capable in offering valuable feedback that improved the quality of the briefing. This thesis concludes with critical reflections to anticipate the future of GenAI in creative corperate processes. The first anticipation includes proposing a new relationship between GenAI and human creatives in the form of co-performance; where one fulfills a role, the other enhances its performance. The second anticipation states that large e-commerce organisation would have terms in their employee contracts that would consider personalised chatbots created by them as intellectual property of the company. In other words, in such organisations, personalised chatbots would likely be developed through a centralised approach. Ultimately, the design contributes to the field of conversational AI design approaches in the context of corperate creative processes by providing a practical and reproducible example.

A new context where designers and other professionals from different fields are becoming increasingly more involved in tackling the daily challenges that we are facing as societies has emerged. Oak & Morrow, a strategic design studio based in Rotterdam, wants to position themselves among this context, by acquiring new knowledge on how their expertise on strategic design could be used to tackle projects on societal challenges. Driven by the curiosity of the studio on projects that aim at solving social problems, this graduation project was set up as a collaboration of Oak & Morrow with TU Delft. The research of the project provides insights on the value that the discipline of Futures thinking can add to Strategic design when designing for projects related to societal challenges. Moreover, it argues that the combination of both disciplines can be used as a knowledge base to develop solutions for societal challenges that have a positive effect on the systemic level. The project has dealt with both a research and a design part. The research part has explored three different areas, being 1. Futures thinking and Strategic design, 2. internal analysis of Oak & Morrow and 3. societal challenges and social innovation. Different types of qualitative methodology has been employed to tackle these three areas, with research methods including literature and generative research, among others. As part of the research activities, different sessions such as a Contextmapping session with Oak & Morrow, or a testing session with design students have been conducted. Based on all the findings of the research of the project, a toolkit has been designed for Oak & Morrow to use Futures thinking and Strategic design to design for societal challenges. As part of the information reviewed to collect insights for the design of the tool, existing tools and methodologies of the disciplines of Strategic design and Futures thinking were analysed during the research phase. These served as inspiration for the ideation of the toolkit for Oak & Morrow. Moreover, the main conclusions of the research that inspired the design of the toolkit have been compressed in different sets of criteria. These criteria defined the characteristics and purposes of the toolkit. The toolkit designed for Oak & Morrow includes activities of Futures thinking and business innovation and contemplates guidelines of social innovation. The toolkit has been structured in three phases: 1. Preparations phase, 2. Uncovering value opportunities and 3. Towards systemic change. Each of the three phases includes different tools focused on a different step of the Futures thinking, business innovation or social innovation process. Overall, the project’s outcomes uncover the value of combining Futures thinking and Strategic design for designing for projects related to societal challenges with a systemic impact. Moreover, the toolkit gives Oak & Morrow the opportunity of exploring a new line of expertise and making stronger their current strategic toolkit. However, to fully measure the value of the toolkit, this should be evaluated in actual design projects with a real case, client demands and the common time constraints of a professional project.

Thanks to an increasingly digitized and connected world, citizen participation in urban projects is transforming from a privilege to an expectation. As cities grow and urban developments impact more and more people, it is vital that these projects reach out to as many individuals as possible and that the voice of these people is heard and taken into serious consideration by Urban Designers. In partnership with U_CODE, an EU Horizon 2020 project, this research and design thesis explores the Urban Designer’s perspective on public participation, what information Urban Designer’s want from citizens and when, as well as how to present this plethora of citizen data to the Urban Designer and his / her team. Most participatory process results end up in a report that no one reads, but this project aims to change that by proposing a digital interface designed with and for Urban Designers specifically to be able to better review, digest and incorporate citizen input into their professional designs. This design was based on multiple forms of research and case studies, including interviews, creative sessions, workshops and user tests. Not only was the end result a digital interface but also a redefined participatory process that starts with asking the right questions and understanding the ‘why?’ behind citizens’ designs.

The U_CODE (Urban Collective Design Environment) project started to create an environment for urban co-creation with citizen. To achieve this, U_CODE has designed and developed a new kind of participatory platform for different European countries. To have an effective co-creation session, U_CODE facilitators need to have a good knowledge and understanding of different culture and values that can affect the co-creation sessions. The purpose of this project is to design guidelines for Super Moderators (SuMo) in U_CODE project to facilitate the co-creation sessions in the Netherlands, Germany, and France. First, I reviewed the literature to find the cultural differences in three countries based on available cultural dimensions models. Then, I made a blueprint for co-creation sessions using U_CODE documents and interview I had with U_CODE specialist. Adding the cultural differences to the blueprint, I made guidelines for each of three countries, which was validated by professional facilitators. Then, I ideated some concepts to find the most effective interaction between the guidelines and facilitators. I tested the concepts with interaction designers who had an experience in facilitating co-creation sessions. Based on the feedbacks and the company’s priority, I designed an app for the guidelines. Finally, I evaluated the final design with a culture professional, an international facilitator and a corporate facilitator. This report is concluded with a discussion and a list of limitations and recommendations for this project.

Change can be defined as deliberate activities that move an organisation from its present state to a desired future state (Harigopal, 2016). A form of facilitating change is to organise a creative session, which is a group process of applied creativity with the ultimate goal to create a product. The product is the desired future state of a creative session and does not have to be tangible. Most importantly, the product has to be further developed or implemented after the creative session in order to achieve a successful process of change. LEF Future Center facilitates breakthroughs by organising creative sessions for the Dutch Public Works and Water Management (Rijkswaterstaat). LEF is the context of the research and the aim of this thesis is to enhance change in their creative sessions. The scope of this research is set on creative sessions of which the problem owner desires an outcome that requires implementation into the associated organisation. First, complete understanding is created on how a creative session facilitates change. Organisational change management and integrated Creative Problem Solving (iCPS) were compared in a literature review. Revealing that iCPS follows similar steps to organisational change management. Afterwards participant observations complemented the research to understand how LEF facilitates change in sessions. The most promising opportunities that resulted from the research are; (1) Ensure a thorough understanding of the problem as given by the problem owner. (2) Define and phrase the goal of the session. (3) Compose a diverse and balanced resource group. (4) Document creative sessions. (5) Inform the problem owner on its role as a change leader. To ultimately influence the implementation of change over the full process, the design focuses on the beginning of the LEF-process. The intake meeting is chosen as the specific context for the design.Considering this meeting could educate all partakers on their respective roles regarding the goal of the creative session, whilst engaging in all elements of an intake meeting. The partakers of an intake meeting are the facilitator, problem owner and account manager. The final design resulted from three evaluation sessions, performed during actual intake sessions at LEF. The Intake Session is the new form of starting the preparations of a LEF-session. The Intake Session is a combination of context specific table and clear instructions, which supports all partakers to fulfil the meeting in three phases. The first phase is introductory. The second phase critically identifies the purpose and reason for the LEF-session. Hereby the partakers give shape to the LEF-session together. The tangible aspects of the table, remind the partakers of all intake elements. During the third phase of the Intake Session, all partakers will evaluate what is in their power to reach the goal of the session and wrap-up with a picture of all that has been written on the tabletop. The physical aspects of the Intake Session fit with LEF’s identity and support all partakers. LEF is aware of their prominent opportunities to enhance change. However, LEF lacks a sufficient intake where these opportunities are used. The ‘Intake Session’ provides an essential physical and visual reminder of how to make a good start in the LEF-process, so LEF can flourish during the creative session and facilitate a breakthrough.

The project is done in the context of the visual thinking Agency Flatland. The aim of this project was to explore reverging in the context of visual thinking. Reverging is the phase that bridges the diverging and converging phases in creative facilitation. The goal of reverging is to revisit and rearrange the options generated in the divergent phase to create a better understanding of all the options to select the best ones in the converging phase. The initial design statement was to make reverging more deliberate at Flatland instead of implicit at Flatland. As reverging is a deliberate activity (Kalina, 2018: Heijne & van der Meer, 2019). DISCOVER To better understand the project's topic, a literature review, interviews with Flatland, and case studies have been conducted. The literature review concluded that reverging is essential for creating a shared understanding of the options generated in the divergent phase. Moreover, it was found that sketching and visualizing help externalize (tacit) knowledge. This enables the sharing, grounding, manipulation, and generation of ideas. Finally, transdisciplinary learning and knowledge creation can be supported by boundary objects, allowing the translation, transfer, and transformation of knowledge. The interviews with Flatland reveal the different skills and characteristics needed as a facilitator or illustrator at Flatland, why visual thinking works according to Flatland, and how they would identify reverging in the Flatland process. The case studies disclosed that the Flatland methodology is more a process flow to hold on to instead of a strict step-by-step plan that needs to be followed. Additionally, it revealed the success factors, risk factors, and requirements for fruitful reverging in visual thinking. DEFINE Based on the findings from the discovery phase of the project a general model was constructed to bring all the findings together. The general model served as the starting point for the design requirements and opportunities. In addition, reverging at Flatland has been described and analyzed more in-depth. The analysis revealed that there was no common knowledge about the concept of reverging. However, it was found that reverging was done at Flatland, but more unconsciously rather than deliberate. Two types of reverging moments at Flatland have been identified: (1) reverging exercises done with the client during a session and (2) the activity called whiteboarding, which is a separate session without the client to make thinking steps based on the output from the previous session. This project focused on the second type of reverging moment because it is a formatted and formulated phase at Flatland, setting a clear boundary for highlighting the problems and developing a design. The main difference between reverging at Flatland compared to the rules described in theory is that it is done without the client. This may lead to the not-invented-here syndrome, which often results in the client's difficult acceptance and implementation of the outcome, according to Buijs & van der Meer (2013). DESIGN BRIEF Based on the output from the general model, design opportunities have been identified. The chosen opportunity for this project was to guarantee client ownership by involving the client more in the whiteboarding reverging process. A design statement and requirements have been formulated to guide the final design’s creation. Additionally, the metaphor of a magic map maker has been formulated to describe the selected opportunity. This narrative was used to make the findings from the research more concrete and get the conversation started. DESIGN Different creative sessions have been held to come up with the starting point for a solution to guarantee client ownership. Based on the input from the co-creation sessions different minimum viable products were created iteratively. These have been discussed with Flatlanders and adapted according to the feedback obtained during the iteration rounds. DELIVER The final design, the whiteboarding tool, consists of three sub-parts: The Flatland workstyles, based on the narrative of the metaphor of the magic mapmaker, balancing the map maker and wizard workstyle throughout the entire process The Flatland journey is adapted from their current setup of the general project flow. The whiteboard phase was not included yet. The Flatland journey aims at making that explicit. Revealing the problem in the focus area (whiteboarding phase) of reverging steps happening without the involvement of the client and therefore the client potentially lacks ownership of the final outcome In order to solve this problem finally the Whiteboard canvas has been developed to help Flatland involve the client in the whiteboarding phase and make their reverging steps explicit so they can be shared and discussed with the client. CONCLUSION The impact of this project was created through (1) the research, (2) the metaphor, and (3) the tool. The research highlighted the discrepancy between the literature and Flatland’s way of working. The gap served as the initial starting point for giving recommendations to Flatland and coming up with the final design. The metaphor served as a narrative for Flatland to talk about the highlighted problem and reflect on their workstyle. The whiteboard tool served as an intervention to do the whiteboarding in a more structured manner with the client's involvement. The canvas has been tested with members of the Flatland team and is ready to be used in Mural, Photoshop, or real life! To conclude the project, the limitations have been highlighted, and future research directions have been proposed.

A creative session is a lot more than a session of generating ideas. It’s part of a much larger goal of delivering innovation in a company. It is necessary to get everyone on board and motivated. And when the motivation levels reached, then beautiful things can happen. In order to achieve a certain motivation level, It’s imperative that people feel the engagement during the creative session. Being engaged in the creative session is not just about paying attention. With positive emotions, people would stimulate themselves to put more effort and energy which formulates a positive loop. And game is the main media as the fun-generator. There is a huge opportunity that puts the game experience to the creative session to explore and examine business challenges, to improve collaboration, and to generate novel insights about the way the world works and what kinds of possibilities we may find there in a playful way.With the collaboration of the serious game company &RANJ, the graduation project focus on developing a toolkit for the creative session based on gamification methodology to stimulate engagement of participants. And eventually, HomeTree - a gamified toolkit that includes four sequent mini-game challenges within a complete story to support participants with diverse backgrounds to get committed to the creative session process in a playful and tangible manner is designed to fufill the project objective.

The average working adult in the Netherlands spends about 42,5 years of their lifetime at work. To make this experience as pleasant as possible, employees spend time finding an organization that can provide a good fit and support their needs. Many organization play into that by providing an Employee Experience (EX) that appeals to potential employees and helps retain them once they join the firm. However, creating a good Employee Experience can be quite challenging due to the necessity to take into account numerous factors such as reward structures, team composition, skill development, and more. Creating successful EX can provide organizations with happy workers that are more engaged, more creative, do superior work, and that are more likely to continue working at the firm (Ragan & Carder, 2019). With creativity being an important driver of an organization’s innovation capacity, building a strong EX strategy may provide interesting new opportunities for influencing the organization’s performance. In this thesis, the relationship between two aspects of Employee Experience –well-being and creativity –is explored. Starting by examining well-being and creativity theory I developed a conceptual model. This laid the groundwork for the investigation of the context of the client company Thinkwiseand paved the way for identifying various design opportunities for positive change. The design opportunities laid the foundations for a design intervention shaped to embody, enable, and implement an EX-strategy that can boost the innovation capacity of Thinkwise. The design opportunities that could boost creativity and wellbeing at Thinkwise constitute various new behaviours that need to be enabled for individual contributors, middle management, and top management. -Individual contributors need to be supported in maintaining high levels of motivation; -Middle managers can support this by improving the ways in which ideas are conceived, managed and implemented, and; -Top management needs to actively manage the creative climate in the organization to support the creative and innovative efforts throughout all layers of Thinkwise. The proposed intervention supports these objectives by providing tools and strategies for supporting idea creation, idea sharing, building an understanding of creative processes and clarifying the roles and activities that contribute to an innovative workplace. It consists of a poster describing the stages of the creative process, a tool for evaluating ideas, and a document that captures the tools and specific context and theory insights.

The application of multidisciplinary collaboration has become a trend to prevent knowledge isolation obstructing business development (Schaubroeck, Tarczewski, & Theunissen, 2016), particularly in the IT industry as it pursue problem-solving innovation. An IT service company is currently striving to transform into an IT innovation consultancy. Despite having a full-functional workforce and the Project Journey model, it is challenging for them to sell and conduct problem-solving projects to their clients. Not every employee from various disciplines is ready for multidisciplinary collaboration. The project went through a variant Double Diamond process. The initial assignment was to mitigate the potential misunderstanding between different disciplines. After the generative design research to investigate the context and identify problems, the researcher concluded with a reframed problem as an essential need to have a continuous and concrete guideline for the company’s multidisciplinary way of working (WoW). The conceptualization process commenced with two co-creation workshops involving frontline workers. Subsequently, the solution is refined based on the insights from previous research and feedback during the sessions. The researcher also drew inspiration from established literature, such as the classic RACI model for multidisciplinary project management and the organizational change management model Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA). The final solution comprises three components. Firstly, as a multidisciplinary WoW framework, Project Journey Blueprint was outlined under seven factors in the service blueprint format. It is more concise, intuitive, and actionable than the classic RACI matrix, with an emphasis on value-based illustration. It reduces misunderstandings between different disciplines and fosters a more efficient and effective multidisciplinary collaboration. Secondly, a co-creation toolkit called Project Journey Embassy was developed to facilitate the Project Journey guideline development with the aim of evoking ownership and mutual understanding. It includes a generative workshop within each discipline and an alignment workshop across all the disciplines, resulting in a consensus on the multidisciplinary WoW guideline. The guideline includes the ideal team configuration and a Minimum Viable Team (MVT) for future projects. Last but not least, a three-stage implementation approach was introduced to bridge the guideline into practice. The process begins with the bottom-up co-creation, followed by a circular organizational-level PDCA, where the Project Journey Blueprint is executed and updated quarterly. The third stage employs project-level PDCA where insights will be reported to discipline ambassadors and discussed in organizational 'Check' moments. The ongoing cycle ensures a resilient continuity of the multidisciplinary WoW. The three-fold solution provides a clear path to foster the transformation towards problem-solving innovation by enhancing multidisciplinary collaboration. It can apply to a broader scope, as there is a common structure and similar project flow across the entire IT industry.

Project aim Recently, the importance of developing spatial thinking has been recognized with the European Union stimulating its development at an early age. Many studies of ways to foster spatial thinking of young children, through online activities as well as embodied activities, have been conducted and provide valuable insights that can be used in preschool settings. In design and engineering, spatial thinking is required to imagine and visualize novel and creative solutions and products. However, design play in preschools has not been researched in the context of spatial thinking so far. Next to this, little is known on individual differences in the way preschools use and develop spatial thinking skills in early childhood. Therefore, in collaboration with Sciencehub TU Delft the aim of this project was to: -Gain insight into diversity of learners and the way they engage and interact with design activities in a classroom context. -Develop educational innovations which take the diversity of learners into account, and stimulate spatial learning in the context of Design and Technology Education. -Develop a tool for educational professionals which communicates the findings of this project. Methodologies employed Throughout the project the following methodologies were employed: Literature research exploring spatial ability in the context of preschoolers, education, design and play. -Participatory qualitative interviews and observations with preschoolers in their classrooms to explore different play preferences. -Generative design research methods grounded in ethnographic research and therapeutic practices to discover how preschoolers with different play preferences interact with an empathic, story-based open-ended design challenge. -Focus group with preservice teachers to explore how they currently take the diversity of learners into account. -User tests with preschoolers and teachers to test and improve the proposed design interventions. Research outcomes Exploring the context of preschooler and teachers resulted in the following summarised research outcomes: -Important play preferences for preschoolers are: construction play, pretend play, open-ended objects, and defined objects. -The play preferences of children influence the length and nature of design activities as well as the design outcomes. -Design activities stimulate children to practice spatial thinking in a creative context. -Teachers know a lot about their students, so the intervention should allow them to use this knowledge. Intervention – preschoolers Based on the research outcomes two variations of assignments, which have the same learning goal, were designed. Each variation focused on a different set of preferences, allowing the preschoolers to interact with the assignment that fits their preferences best. Intervention – teachers A booklet summarising the outcomes of this project was made. An actionable step-by-step plan and worksheet were created with which teachers can design their own variations of assignments based on preferences of students in their class. The interventions were evaluated with preschoolers and (preservice) teachers, and showed promising results. Recommendations regarding improvements and implementation are provided.